comics re-visited

So it turns out, as it usually does, that we are not alone in our despair at the way women are often drawn in comic books. I stumbled across this high-larious website: Girls Read Comics (And They’re Pissed). It sometimes takes a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. Not as funny but extremely fascinating is Project Girl Wonder, who’ve adopted the fantastic strategy of actually lobbying DC Comics to change a storyline that they feel has severely dis-serviced women, by killing off a central female character in a brutal and degrading way.

I was shocked when I discovered that, in writing my complaint about how women in comic books are sometimes drawn (that is, like toothpicks, though with symmetrical cotton balls stuck to their upper regions), I didn’t consult a most obvious resource: Shameless! See Shameless: Summer 2005 for more info. (If you, horror of horrors, don’t have it, don’t fret! You can still buy it here).

And, to finally out myself as a Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con geek, here is a video of Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and the movie Serenity, giving a damn fine speech.